“I remember … how you loved me as a bride.” Early in her history, Israel enjoyed a close and cordial relationship with the Lord, who is often described figuratively as Israel’s husband. Hosea loves to use this image. But it was a love that did not last and later was transferred to “foreign gods”. In the days in the Sinai desert, they were with God, but later they followed worthless idols. In those early days, they showed their fidelity by following God “through a land unsown”, arid and infertile, and where they lived in total dependence on God. Now, in their prosperity, they go for other indulgences.
Despite all they were given, they betrayed the trust that God had in them, and disaster overcame them. God kept his promise and brought them to a fertile country, “into the garden land to eat its fruits”, the opposite of the “unsown” desert through which they had wandered for 40 years. Everything in the new land was for them. But what did they do? They defiled it through their idolatrous practices; they even made the land ceremonially unclean. “You made my heritage loathsome.” What had been God’s inheritance, freely given to them, became hateful in God’s eyes.
Even the priests no longer paid attention to God. They never consulted God. They never even bothered to ask, ‘Where is the Lord?’ Those same priests whose responsibility it was to administer the Law had become strangers to God. “Those who dealt with the Law, knew me not”. “The shepherds,” that is, the king and the ruling classes, “rebelled against me.” The prophets prophesied in the name of Baal and not of God, putting their trust in “useless idols” which were utterly powerless.
This is the message in today’s Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 2:1‑3, 7-8, 12‑13). God, through Jeremiah, calls on the heavens to witness to this appalling situation. “Stand aghast, you heavens!”
The people have committed a double crime. On the one hand, they have turned their backs on God, the source of living water, the water they received from God in the desert, the water of true life. At the same time, they have tried to provide water for themselves using cisterns that consistently leak and do not provide water in times of greatest need.
The image of God as living water is one that is found often in the Scriptures. “From your delightful stream you give them to drink” (Psalm 36:9). “All you who are thirsty come to the water”, cries Isaiah (55:1). Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman of the living water that only he can give (John 4). In Revelation, the One on the throne says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of life” (Revelations 21:6).
In our own days, there are so many, including many who are baptized, who try to replace God, the source of life-giving water, with other things they believe will provide the happiness and contentment they seek. It may be money in all its forms: success, fame, popularity, material goods, sex, etc. Yet all these are, in the long run (and often enough in the short run), no better than leaking cisterns that quickly turn to bitter-tasting dust.
“They just don’t get it.” That seems to be the message in the gospel today (Matthew 13:10‑17). How many times have you heard someone describe a group with whom they disagree with this stinging, yet ultimately unhelpful, dismissal? Perhaps you, like me, have uttered those words yourself. Once “we” determine that “they” “don’t get it,” “we” can bask in our superiority and stop caring about “them.”
At first glance this seems to be what Jesus is saying about the crowds to whom he speaks in parables: “They look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.” I think we need to give Jesus a little more credit, though. Surely, he does care for the disciples, but He also cares for the crowds and wants them to understand, to believe, to be redeemed.
The context of today’s gospel is following the Parable of the Sower and the Soils that we heard yesterday. My sense is that Jesus is mainly telling the disciples that they are good soil, and He is encouraging them to continue with Him and learn more. “To anyone who has, more will be given ….”
Let us learn to see that the vision of Jesus as truly the way, the way to wholeness and life.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!